Establishing the Commission on Freedom of Information Act Processing Delays

Floor Speech

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Mr. President, a number of us, myself included, have been arguing since January--ever since we arrived here and were sworn in this very room--that the national debt is a permanent problem. The almost $15 trillion that we now owe as a nation is permanent. It is going to take a long time to pay off. There are people who are not yet old enough to vote. There are people who will be born in a few years who are not even here who will one day have to assist in paying off that debt.

The fact that this is a long-term problem means it requires a long-term solution. That is why we have been saying all along that we ought not raise the debt limit yet again--extending our national debt by another $2.5 trillion, more or less, without a permanent solution in place.

Herein lies the problem. It is difficult or impossible for one Congress to come up with a set of budget numbers that would necessarily bind future Congresses. We can come up with a plan to cut $2 trillion or $3 trillion over a 10-year or 15-year period, but if future Congresses don't want to go along with that, they can find their way out of it. This has happened again and again as we have seen with Gramm-Rudman-Hollings, as we have seen with the pay-go rules. Congress becomes a walking, breathing waiver unto itself. We need a permanent solution. This is why we have settled on the need for a balanced budget amendment.

As my distinguished colleague--the junior Senator from Kentucky--has just pointed out, there is no intransigence in our position. Those of us who identify with the Republican Party, those of us who identify with the tea party are people who want a solution. We were sent here with a mandate by voters, a mandate that says the Federal Government is too big and too expensive.

Now, resistance to this message from the other side of the aisle, as vehement as that resistance may be, is not genuine if what it says is, in this instance the insistence

for a balanced budget amendment is itself reflective of an unwillingness to compromise. There are myriad opportunities to compromise within that general framework. We have offered that. We have extended that.

Republicans have now submitted no fewer than two bills that have passed the House of Representatives to address the debt limit issue, both of which have been stopped dead in their tracks over here without further opportunity, most importantly, without a response by the Democratic Party in the Senate or otherwise.

If there is either party in this discussion that is refusing to compromise, it is not ours. If there is any group that has failed to offer solutions, it cannot be described as the tea party movement.

I ask my colleague--the junior Senator from Kentucky--do you see any element within the tea party movement, any element within the Republican Party that is unwilling to compromise or that is wanting to block just for the sake of blocking?

Mr. PAUL. No. From going to hundreds of tea party rallies and grassroots rallies with voters across America, what I see is they want what is best for America. I don't think they particularly care whether it is a Republican plan or Democratic plan. They want what is best for America. They want a solution.

The problem with the debate in Washington is all of the proposals seem to want to add more debt. We have $14 trillion worth of debt, and both the Republican and the Democratic proposal will add $7 trillion to $8 trillion more in debt.

What I think the folks in the tea party want--and those who are concerned about passing on the debt to their kids and grandkids want--is to spend less. I think a great contrast and what illustrates the problem is spending is going up 7 percent a year. Nobody is talking about cutting that spending. They are talking about cutting the rate of growth of that spending.

There is a new plan out called the one penny plan. It would have real cuts of one penny on every dollar spent. The other side pulls their hair and says: Oh, you are so radical.

We say: We want to cut one penny out of every dollar of government spending. Is that radical?

The President has said it is a dysfunctional place. He is right in that sense. I think some of the dysfunction comes from the hypocrisy or from the other side not really listening.

For example, the balanced budget amendment. They say polls show routinely 75 percent of Americans are for it. Routinely, about 14 percent of Americans seem to be approving of this body. The question I would have is--maybe it is we are not listening well enough. Maybe we are not doing what the people want.

Mr. LEE. That certainly appears to be the case. It is a reminder to us of the fact that no matter how much we might be tempted at times to demagogue this issue, no matter how tempting it might be for certain Members of this body to cast blame elsewhere, they cannot escape one simple fact, which is the American people are demanding more. They are demanding that we spend less. They are demanding that we stop this barbaric practice of perpetual massive-scale deficit spending. Why? Because it erodes individual liberty. It takes money people have not yet made and spends it and obligates them to repay it--in some cases before they are old enough to vote, in other cases before they are even born. We need a permanent solution.

When we put something in the Constitution, it serves as a permanent reminder of the fact that we, as a people, have made a decision, and we are going to move forward. Not everybody will necessarily agree as to how best we should move forward having made that decision. The American people overwhelmingly, to the tune of 75 percent, support the idea that we should amend the Constitution to restrict Congress's deficit spending power.

Mr. PAUL. When people talk about Washington being dysfunctional, and they are upset with what is going on in Washington, I think one of the things that upsets people is hypocrisy--people who say one thing and do another. That is a sad state of affairs. People run on one idea and then they completely change their ideas.

The President was a Senator, and he spoke on the Senate floor. Here are his words in 2006.

The fact that we are here today debating raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure.

He was sort of pointing fingers. Everybody's pointing fingers. It is someone else's fault. I call that sort of the empty partisanship. His conclusion, then, is voting to raise the debt limit would send a bad signal. It would send a signal to our leaders that they are doing the right thing.

I have often said there is no objective evidence that Washington or Congress is spending our money wisely.

The Pentagon says they are too big to be audited. They cannot balance their books. There was $100 billion unaccounted for in the budget last year. There are $5 billion worth of duplicate programs the GAO found. There are, I believe, 82 different programs to train workers. Could we not deal with one Federal program training workers instead of 82 different ones doing the same thing? But this is it. The President said raising the debt ceiling would be a mistake. Now that he is President, he has changed his mind. I think the hypocrisy of that is what makes Americans unhappy.

The President said the same thing on war. He said no President should unilaterally go to war without congressional authority, and here we are at war in Libya with no vote in Congress. He said he has a piece of paper from the United Nations. We didn't elect the United Nations. We have a Constitution, and it requires those issues be debated in Congress.

People are unhappy because we are not doing the people's business. We haven't had a budget in 800 days. Do you know what. It is against the law. It is against the law not to have a budget.

We haven't had a budget in 800 days, but the budget law says we should have a budget every year. We are supposed to match our appropriations bills with the budget. We are not doing it.

The American people are unhappy we are dysfunctional and that we are not doing the people's business. We have also become profligate spenders--spending money we don't have. I think we risk great dangers.

I ask the question to this Senator from Utah: What is the answer? How do we get out of this when we seem to be so far apart, and even on both sides we don't seem to be tackling the issues in a way that would allow for significant cuts in spending?

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I have a friend by the name of Ron McMillan, who lives in my hometown of Alpine, UT. He is the author of a number of books dealing with business negotiations, dealing with trying to figure out how compromise can be reached.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senators has expired.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an extension of 2 minutes to finish our thoughts.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?

Mr. DURBIN. I don't object, as long as this side is given an additional 2 minutes.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. LEE. In that series of books, the crucial conversation line of the books, one of the things he encourages people to do is to find whatever common ground they can reach.

I think there is common ground among the American people generally that we should balance our budget. Not everyone agrees about how we balance the budget, what should be cut, but they do agree we should balance it. That being the case, that is where we ought to focus our efforts. We should focus our efforts on amending that law of laws, that 224-year-old document that fostered the development of the greatest civilization the world has ever known. We should change it, again, to improve it, to restrict Congress's borrowing power.

The plan proposed by the Democrats that is now about to come before us puts our budgeting process on autopilot. It doesn't require another budget for 2 years, preserving the ability of ObamaCare to fund itself without a single additional debate in Congress. This is wrong. This is not the right approach. I object to it. For that reason, I, along with some of my other Republican colleagues, am prepared to vote on this and vote no on it right now. We are not the ones delaying this vote.

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